Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to flexible grid optical networks and, more particularly, to efficient utilization of transceivers for shared restoration in flexible grid optical networks.
Description of the Related Art
Telecommunications systems, cable television systems and data communication networks may use optical networks to rapidly convey large amounts of information between remote points. In an optical network, information may be conveyed in the form of optical signals through optical fibers. Optical fibers may comprise thin strands of glass capable of communicating the signals over long distances with very low loss. Optical networks often employ modulation schemes to convey information in the optical signals over the optical fibers. Such modulation schemes may include phase-shift keying (PSK), frequency-shift keying (FSK), amplitude-shift keying (ASK), and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). In PSK, the information carried by the optical signal is conveyed by modulating the phase of a reference signal, also known as a carrier wave. The information may be conveyed by modulating the phase of the signal itself using differential phase-shift keying (DPSK). In QAM, the information carried by the optical signal is conveyed by modulating both the amplitude and phase of the carrier wave. PSK may be considered a subset of QAM, where the amplitude of the carrier waves are maintained as a constant.
Emerging network applications, such as cloud and big data, may involve joint consideration of information technology (IT) resources residing at data centers and network resources interconnecting data centers. As more applications move to the cloud the bandwidth of inter-data center connections increases, such as to 400 Gb/s and beyond. With the help of software defined networking (SDN) technology, inter-data center connections may be dynamically provisioned and may perform both bandwidth adjustment to match application demand variations, as well as restoration of network links in case of failures.